


reading out the horoscopes and using up our jokes

by FoxGlade



Series: #hashtag 'verse [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: FINALLY AN END TO THE PRE-SLASH, Gen, M/M, Slice of Life, The Baby Momma Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers and Co. play ultimate frisbee with Cap's shield, benefit from Bruce's knitting habit, go on missions and throw a BBQ party. A study in families of choice, and an end to the #hashtag 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reading out the horoscopes and using up our jokes

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the wait, guys. i fell into a motivation black hole and just couldn't write anything for weeks. shout out to Xmarksthespot, who left a comment the other day telling me that they're constantly wondering "why BABY MOMMA", and reminded me that i have approximately 30000 untold stories for this 'verse and needed to write them ASAP.
> 
> that being said, im going to mark this series as complete, as i've really lost motivation to continue writing for it. but who knows? i have a lot of ideas for these guys. more fic may appear in the distant future.
> 
> note about the timeline of this fic: Part One is set after "sock it to me"/during the main series. Part Two is set after Picture This.
> 
> title from, again, Get Some Sleep by Bic Runga, which is this series' theme song. thank you so much for staying with me on this series, i love each and every one of you for it.

**Part One**

So Bruce knits Bucky a full-length glove for his metal arm, but that’s not the story. The story is:

There are a lot of people living in the tower, these days, and a fair number who visit on a regular basis. It’s not surprising that some people just don’t interact with others. Thor and Kate Bishop have never said a word to each other, Clint tends to only hang out with people he knew prior to moving in, Rhodey still has a bit of a grudge against Natasha from that whole palladium poisoning thing. It’s whatever.

But somehow, Bruce has become the lowest common denominator for them all. _Everyone_ likes Bruce, which is surprising enough on its own that sometimes it makes him dizzy. He can’t say it started with knitting Bucky the glove; if anything, it started when Natasha dragged him from Kolkata to the Helicarrier, or the first time he met Pepper, or when he rushed back to New York at Christmas to make sure Tony was okay, or very possibly the first time he met Rhodey. Probably the last one, actually.

He received the Pepper Potts Seal of Approval back when they first met, just after the Battle of New York, but the first time it really counts is when Rhodey flies over for a visit He’s tall enough that Bruce has to conspicuously look up to meet his eyes, and Rhodey gives him a wry grin as they shake hands, then says, “Heard you’ll be sticking around.”

“I’m pretty much stuck,” Bruce replies honestly, and Rhodey claps him on the shoulder before asking Tony what food he has around here. So Rhodey likes him because Pepper likes him and Tony loves him, and Rhodey likes him even more when he beats him at Wii tennis that night.

So it starts there, but it continues here: When Bucky first arrived at the tower, still twitchy and quiet and prone to drifting out of reality every other hour, Bruce would watch him trail behind Steve, speaking softly or not at all. When Clint would direct Steve around the kitchen, giving him cooking lessons and discount therapy sessions, Bucky would more often than not sit with Bruce in the living room; close enough to keep Steve in sight, far enough to not hear their every word. At least, Bruce couldn’t hear them. Bucky probably could, come to think of it.

In any case, Bruce, with all the social skills of an anxiety-ridden mountain goat, would ignore him and knit. He’d been working on a scarf at the time, blue and bronze, if only to defy Tony’s commands to make it Iron Man themed. Bucky would just watch his hands and seem soothed by the rhythmic clacking of his knitting needles, so Bruce didn’t feel too threatened. Not the least because, if he suddenly went Winter Soldier again, Bruce wasn’t exactly defenceless.

So he keeps knitting and Bucky keeps sitting with him and eventually they start having quiet discussions over tea about books Bucky might like, and then they start commiserating about having been left out of various pop culture landmarks due to Bruce being on the run, and Bucky being, well. And it’s nice to have someone to talk to that isn’t Tony, who sometimes has trouble understanding that alike as they are, there is no way Bruce can consistently be on his level of non-stop high-speed action.

He finishes the scarf and gives it to Tony out of spite, which backfires when he exclaims about it being in his Hogwarts House colours, kisses Bruce’s cheek and runs off with it. When he mentions it to Steve that night while showing how to make his Crazy Spicy Curry, and Steve blithely mentions that he read the series a few months back, they get into a long discussion about Hogwarts Houses. It ends in them fighting over which Houses their team members would be, a battle only interrupted by Natasha rolling her eyes and insisting on putting on the movies, if only to shut them up. It works, mostly because they all automatically fall respectfully silent at the iconic theme music, even those that haven’t heard it before.

(“How the hell have you not seen this before?” Tony asks Clint incredulously. “Would’ve thought a kid growing up in a cupboard would be your style, considering the nest we all know you have in the air ducts.”

Clint laughs, but it’s got a hard edge to it, so no one says anything for the rest of the movie. Especially not when Harry is surprised at getting presents for Christmas, and at least three of them loudly sniff back tears.)

After that, Bruce starts a new knitting project in between his lab work and Time Dedicated to Making Tony Stark Happy (which intersects with his lab time and is an official event set for every other day in his planner, and is also impossible to delete. Which just confirms that Bruce was right in not trusting Tony’s decision to replace his diary with an electronic version). Natasha sits with him now that Bucky has recovered more, and Steve drops down next to him every now and then to ask him about the different countries and cultures he’s lived in. Clint announces his intention to start challenging him to cook-offs, which end up as less of a competition and more of a chance to swap recipes and have quiet, stilted conversations about their less than pleasant shared childhood experiences.

When Thor arrives, Jane and Darcy in tow, Bruce doesn’t even see him or Darcy for a week. Jane, on the other hand, is thrilled to talk with him and Tony about their past work and where their fields overlap, which results in hours of experiments and frantic paper writing. After the initial “New Scientist” feeling wears off, and he has a few spare hours to continue his knitting, Thor comes and sits with him – well. Thor comes and naps on the couch opposite the one Bruce has claimed on his own, the sound of his deep breaths calming. More often than not the sound lulls Bruce off to sleep as well, which leads to several photos of them circulating through the residential area of the tower.

Kate Bishop drops by when he’s halfway through his knitting project, storming past him without a glance to get to Clint’s room, then walking out ten minutes later with the greatest furious/affectionate expression Bruce has ever seen. She pauses halfway across the floor, turns to him and says, “You should put more blue in it, less red,” then walks out. The next time he sees her, it’s at a Movie Night, and she winks at him before arguing with Clint that the season three finale of Dog Cops was the greatest episode of the show, no contest, even the one with the barrels couldn’t compare.

The first time Sam Wilson visits, they don’t say a word to each other. The second time he visits, he shakes Bruce’s hand as soon as Natasha lets him out of her bear hug and smiles like they’re old friends, and somehow, it feels true; his skin doesn’t crawl like it normally does when he meets new people, and he finds himself smiling freely. And later, when they’re sitting cross-legged on the floor around a game of Snap Jack and Natasha brings her hand down on a three inch pile of cards, when Bruce gives a loud shout of frustration, Sam doesn’t even flinch – just throws his head back and laughs. It’s not like he’s keeping a list of his favourites or anything, but if he was? Sam would be near the top.

With all the people running through the tower at all times of the day, and Tony monopolising his time and Jane earnestly asking for his second opinion on these readings, yes she _knows_ this isn’t his field but it’d be a huge favour; with all of that to deal with, Bruce doesn’t have much time for knitting. It was never meant to be a real hobby, just something to fill the time. But this project’s important, so when it’s 1am and Tony’s pacing his workshop floor, muttering to himself and tugging on his own hair like he’s trying to pull it out, Bruce grabs him by the wrist and drags him up to the living room to sit. He pushes him down onto the couch, and then sits next to him and drapes his legs over Tony’s lap so he can’t get up, and he starts to knit.

Just like Bucky, Tony finds it soothing, and after a few more anxiety attacks that Bruce aborts with a calm voice and a gentle hand, he lies down on the couch, stretched out parallel to Bruce with his head on Bruce’s lap. And that’s how Bruce finishes knitting Bucky’s full length glove/sleeve/thing; with Tony Stark half-unconscious and whuffling into his thigh. Bruce shakes his shoulder and he looks up, eyes bleary.

“Can you go make me some tea?” he asks around a yawn. “I’m just going to lie down for a second.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tony says, and there’s still something dark in his eyes. Bruce watches him walk into the kitchen and settles into a horizontal position, grabbing the hideous purple blanket Clint had brought with him when he moved in off the back of the couch.

He’ll just lie down for a few minutes, he decides, and is asleep moments later.

(Tony never tells him about calling Rhodey, but he does talk to Bruce in the morning.)

What this whole story amounts to, what every part of this results in is: A day or two later, Bruce hesitantly offers Bucky the glove/sleeve/thing. Bucky takes it and stares at the muted blue, patterned with thin red and white bands at staggered intervals.

“I’m not actually that good at knitting,” Bruce says apologetically as Bucky slips it over his metal arm. It doesn’t fit perfectly; it’s a little big at the fingers, and stretched tight over the ball of his shoulder. “Feel free to, uh, throw it out the window, or something.”

After a few moments, Bucky smiles, suddenly, and pulls a startled Bruce into a hug with his now covered arm. His wool-clad hand is soft and warm at the back of Bruce’s neck, and it feels nothing like human skin, but that was never the point.

“Thanks, Doc,” Bucky mutters, still smiling, and that was the point all along.

Bruce knits Bucky a full-length glove, but that’s not the story. The story is: through some twist of fate, Bruce makes people happy, now. And that’s the best story he’s ever been a part of.

 

 

**Part Two**

There’s a light breeze blowing through the city, and it’s only slightly stronger on the roof of the tower, to Steve’s surprise. It’s gently ruffling everyone’s hair and clothes. Within minutes of them all filing out of the roof access passage, Bucky had turned to Natasha and sheepishly asked for a hair tie; he still doesn’t carry any of his own, despite his hair being almost to his shoulders again after the trim he got last month. Natasha just rolls her eyes with a smile and hands him a scrunchie.

“Everyone ready?” Steve calls. It’s just an informal training exercise, no comms, so he has his voiced pitched for them all to hear, even Sam and Tony, who’re hovering a few metres out from the roof. There’s a chorus of answers, ranging from “yes sir!” to just a loud whoop. Steve grins, then throws the shield.

Bucky, balanced on the edge of the roof, catches it easily, stilling it with his metal arm. He only pauses for a second before he’s passing it on to Tony, with much less force than Steve had. Tony grabs onto it and spins, using the momentum to throw it back towards the roof. It goes on like that, most of them catching and passing in the same manner that Tony had (Thor just catches it and grins for a moment before throwing it, hammer style, back to Steve), with the others heckling good-naturedly.

“You think that’s tricky?” Clint says as Natasha grabs the shield and flips over it before passing it on to Tony. “Throw it here, watch this.”

Tony obliges, and Clint sidesteps the shield just as it reaches him. It goes sailing over the edge of the roof, and before Steve can so much as let out a disapproving noise, _Clint_ goes over the roof as well, jumping with a cut-off shout.

“I’ll get him,” Sam says, and he disappears for a few seconds before reappearing, holding onto Clint by his belt – Clint, who has Steve’s shield in his left hand.

“Beat _that_ , losers,” he says, before he is pelted with gravel by his teammates.

\---

“I ever tell you why I call Natasha ‘Baby Momma’?” Clint says suddenly. Steve’s fingers twitch where they’re pressed against the growing stain of red on his leg.

“No,” he replies. “I’ve always wondered, though. Did you two have a secret lovechild?” He speaks right into Clint’s ear; his hearing aids had been damaged in the explosion.

Clint laughs weakly, ending on a grimace of pain. “No, I would’ve- I’m kinda slow on the uptake, with people. Not that slow. Would’ve noticed.”

“So, why?” It’s not like Steve hasn’t done this before – coaxed stories and anecdotes out of wounded soldiers, distracting them from the blood loss, keeping them awake to ward off concussions. He remembers listening to Gabe wistfully explaining how his fiancée back home was the most perfect woman in the United States, and nodding along to Dum Dum’s endless tales of his kids’ exploits.

Bucky never spoke, those few times he got hurt bad enough to keep him down. Steve never liked to think about why.

“It was kinda like this,” Clint begins, then breaks off to cough into the hand that still has working fingers – luckily, it’s his left. “I had real bad internals, Coulson had a bullet in his shoulder. Natasha was the best off, and her ankle was smashed. This was way back, when me and Coulson were kinda new. Like, only a few months.” He closes his eyes and grins at the memory. “Lemme tell you, I was terrified. I could feel myself bleeding out, and all I could think was, _damn, I never even got a chance with him_.”

“You’re gonna be fine, Clint,” Steve interjects, putting more pressure onto his leg. Clint grits his teeth and nods.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, waving a hand half-heartedly. “So I looked over at him and straight up said, ‘Hey Phil, if we get out of this, we should get a kid.’ Not that we should get married, that we should have a baby. Still got no idea why I said it,” he says with another terrible sounding laugh. “He just looked at me, he had blood all over his face but somehow he still looked so put together, and he said, ‘Babies aren’t an officially sanctioned part of SHIELD’s reward system, Barton.’ And I just lost it. Completely fucked up my ribs, but it was totally worth it.”

Steve gives him a disapproving look, but it’s tempered by the fact that he’s almost losing it himself. “And what did Natasha think of it?” he manages around the laughter in his throat.

“She looked at me and she said, ‘Barton, if you don’t die here, I will give you a baby myself.’ So I didn’t. Obviously,” he says, with something that might have been a shrug. “So now I’m going to call her Baby Momma until she gives me the baby I was promised. Actually, I don’t know if she meant, like, from her own womb, or if she meant that she’d steal one for me?”

“I honestly don’t know which option I’d hope for,” Steve says, just as he hears the crunch of boots on gravel outside their hiding spot. “Stay quiet,” he tells Clint, as loudly as he dares.

The footsteps pause on the other side of the ripped-up concrete barrier. Steve picks up his shield silently, holding it in front of himself and Clint, not standing yet.

There’s a muffled noise, and then Coulson is vaulting over the barrier to land perfectly in front of them, suit somehow untouched by the dust filling the air. “Agents,” he says easily. “Your extraction has arrived.”

“About time,” Clint says, grinning. Steve slings the shield onto his back and carefully picks up Clint, who only protests minimally at being carried like a bride across a threshold.

“Thought we didn’t have extraction for this mission?” Steve asks Coulson idly as they pick their way through the debris. There’s a clearing about a hundred feet away with a quinjet parked in it.

“You went off comms. I was in the area,” he says mildly.

“Hey, Phil, we should get a kid,” Clint interrupts, head lolling. “I definitely deserve one this time, I promise.”

When Coulson speaks a few moments later, it’s with repressed laughter in his voice. “Talk to Natasha about it,” he says. “Or Miss Lewis.”

“Baby Momma number two!” Clint crows, and then passes out.

\---

“People seriously write this shit?” Bucky says. The tablet in front of him is open on a website with a maroon logo in the top left corner. More prominent on the page are the words “Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes” in large black font.

“How did you even find this?” Natasha asks, idly curious. She reaches over his shoulder and scrolls through the list of links.

“I just wanted to look into those Captain America films they made after the war,” Bucky says mournfully. “I was on Wikipedia, and then I found this thing called TV Tropes…”

“Say no more,” Natasha says. “Huh. That one looks pretty good, actually. Can you link it to me?”

Steve makes a betrayed noise. “You really wanna read about us..?”

“Lighten up, Rogers, it says there’s no sex in it,” Natasha replies. “Think of it like the comics, except with less claims that the stories are truthful.”

“She’s got a point,” Bucky says. “Hey, listen to this: “On a mission in the Alps, Steve and Bucky are separated from the rest of the Commandoes and take shelter in a cave, and must share body heat to stay alive.”” He smirks at Steve, eyes half-lidded in a seductive look. “Wanna share some body warmth, soldier?”

Steve shoves him out of the chair. Bucky just lands on his metal hand and springs into a flip, landing on his feet and laughing. Natasha takes the opportunity to grab the tablet and scroll some more.

“I’ll open Coulson’s rec list,” she tells them both. “He’s very proud.”

“I just don’t understand why people would write about me and Bucky like… that,” Steve says awkwardly. “We were just friends.” Natasha, bless her kind and discrete soul, doesn’t question his use of the past tense.

“You guys had a kind of Alexander and Hephaestion thing going on, I guess,” she says instead, then snaps her fingers. “You watched Star Trek, right? Try Googling “slash fiction”. It’ll explain things.”

Steve, who has long since given up on his notebook, just nods. Bucky steals back the tablet and frowns at all the tabs Natasha’s opened up.

“I’m not reading these,” he says. She shrugs.

“It’s not that different from watching the Captain America movies,” she replies. “Most of these have a lot better writing. Don’t worry, I only picked the ones that don’t have you and Steve screwing each other’s brains out.”

“Thanks for the consideration,” Bucky says. Natasha just tilts her head and smiles guilelessly.

\---

“You _fucker_ , I’m going to steal your lab equipment in the dead of night and sell it on eBay, don’t think I won’t, you monster!”

“Hate the game, not the player,” Bruce crows, eyes fixed on his screen. Tony is scowling, and Jane has her tongue half poking out between her teeth in concentration, and the anticipation in the air is thick enough to choke on.

“So 2048 was a bad idea,” Steve says, wincing as Jane gives a celebratory shout of “ONE-OH-TWO-FOUR!” Tony starts muttering a string of curses, to which Bruce just laughs.

\---

“So I’m thinking of asking Phil to marry me,” Clint says casually. He shoots another two arrows into the tires of one of the escaping jeeps and continues, “Again.”

“What is this, the sixth or seventh time?” Natasha asks. He can see her from his perch up here, and it’s amazing how even her voice is while she’s garrotting a man into unconsciousness.

“This’ll be the seventh. Widow requires backup on her six,” he adds, and he sees Bucky instantly spin from his place at Steve’s back to respond.

On the ground, Bucky takes out the last of his targets with a well-timed coat hanger movement, and shoots Steve a grin. “Give me a boost,” he shouts, and in seconds he’s bouncing off Steve’s shield and flying up onto the bridge where Natasha’s whirling between four terrorists, striking blows against one before zipping to the next. Only one has spotted him, so he grabs the closest one with his metal arm and throws him off the bridge for Steve to deal with, before unsheathing his knife and diving in. “You got anything planned?” he says into the comm, and on his corner of the rooftop one block away, Clint shrugs.

“Nothing fancy. Home-cooked dinner, some wine, it’ll be good.”

“It’s not like he’ll say no,” Natasha points out as she zaps the last of the terrorists with her Widow’s Sting, leaving him drooling and unconscious at her feet.

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna take it for granted, y’know?” Clint replies. “Widow, Soldier, you’re clear. Cap, there’s a few more behind the jeep I took out, a block down and ‘round the corner, then we’re done. Keep it careful – we found one bomb on ‘em, they may have more.”

“Copy that,” Steve says, hitching his shield up and moving cautiously down the road. “I think it’s great that you don’t,” he adds to Clint. “Take him for granted, I mean.”

“Not hard when I only see him once every other damn month,” Clint mutters, and aims an explosive arrow a few metres behind the crouching targets. “Give me the signal and I’ll flush ‘em out for you.”

“Standby,” Steve replies as the car comes into sight. He presses himself against the side of the buildings, thankful for the late afternoon shadows, and also that his newest combat suit is nowhere near as bright as Coulson’s initial design was. “In position, Hawkeye. Your move.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” He sights, draws and fires within the space of a second, and the three targets let out surprised shouts when an arrow embeds itself into the ground a few feet from them and promptly explodes. They scramble over the car, dazed from the blast, and Steve takes them down, hitting one with his shield and knocking the other two out with a well-placed kick and punch before they even realise what’s happening. All three of them drop to the ground almost simultaneously, and Steve gives a casual salute in Clint’s direction.

“Looks like a wrap, folks,” Clint says, packing away his bow and mechanized quiver. “Let’s get the debrief over quick; I got a hot date tonight, and if I’m late he may throw me out a window.”

\---

It’s a brilliant day.

“It’d only take a few minutes to set up, seriously,” Tony argues. Steve puts his face in his hands, seemingly out of annoyance; in actuality, to hide his growing smile. “It’d be great press, Stark Industries celebrates Independence Day and Captain America’s birthday with an amazing light show! No holds barred for this patriotic event!”

“No, Tony,” Steve says, voice muffled. There’s a scuffling sound, and when he opens his eyes, Tony’s walking away, grumbling and rubbing his shoulder, and Bucky’s standing in front of him.

“Hey,” he says. “Sam’s almost done on the grill, says you get first serve. Wanna get over there before a riot starts up?”

The bulk of the tower blocks the wind, this high up, so the gathering on the oversized balcony of Stark tower is going off without a hitch. Only two people have gone over the edge so far, and Jane seemed quite happy to let Thor sweep her up and take her for an impromptu flight around the city. Tony's offer to do the same for Pepper was met with a sweetly muttered, "Tony, if you try to pick me up with that suit outside of an emergency, I will _break it_." 

Pepper and Thor are now both standing beside the grill, Thor happily expounding at great length on the perks of living full-time at Stark tower, Pepper occasionally chiming in with slightly more practical benefits. Sam just keeps poking the burger patties and ignoring the gathering crowd.

“… and I’m sure our dear friend Steve would be most pleased if you were to remain here,” Thor says, with an air of triumph. Sam rolls his eyes, then spots Steve moving through the crowd of hungry tower residents towards the grill, Bucky trailing behind like a shadow.

“Dude, get over here before I have to start beating people away with this spatula,” he laughs. Steve grabs an obnoxiously stars-and-stripes patterned paper plate and accepts two burgers from Sam. He looks at the people impatiently waiting for their food.

“So, who’s next?” Sam asks.

Instantly there’s a brief but intense struggle to be the one standing closest to the grill. After a few moments, Natasha emerges, not a hair out of place, and accepts her plate.

Narrowly averted superhuman riot aside, the whole day has been almost suspiciously relaxed. Normally at this point, Steve would start worrying about Magneto throwing a tantrum and ripping up some train lines, or Coulson calling in to give them a mission in Siberia, but today he just accepts the calm as it is.

“Don’t think so hard, Steve,” Bucky drawls, joining him at the railing. Behind him, Steve can see Clint pulling himself up onto the ‘A’ fixed to the tower’s side, Kate watching on with an unimpressed look, and idly feeding Lucky bits of hamburger. Even from here, he can see the sunlight glint off the ring on Clint's outstretched hand. “I can see the cogs ticking in your head. You alright?”

“Yeah,” he says. “No, of course. It’s just – I don’t know. It’s a good day.”

They stand in relative silence for a while, taking in the background noise of conversation behind them. Rhodey is telling some anecdote about Tony and himself when they were in college, and Bruce is already laughing helplessly, ignoring Tony’s attempts to “correct” Rhodey’s story.

“Didn’t know what to get you for your birthday, this year,” Bucky says suddenly. When Steve looks over, he’s staring out over the city. “It’s not like it used to be – you can buy your own pencils and things, now.”

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Steve argues. “I’m pretty sure no one else is.”

“But I want to,” Bucky replies, frowning. “So… I was thinking. There’s this nice Italian place I saw a couple weeks back, a few blocks from here. Booked a table for tonight. My treat?”

Bucky’s giving him an inscrutable look as he asks, no trace of emotion on his features. Steve considers him, then smiles.

“Sounds great,” he says, and Bucky’s blank mask cracks into a grin of his own. He ducks his head, and Steve is hit with a sudden rush of gratefulness; that Bucky’s here, that he’s recovering so well from the trauma of the past seventy years, that somehow, everything has turned out perhaps not perfect, but pretty damn well. So he leans down and kisses Bucky’s cheek, and mutters, “Thanks.”

Bucky’s head shoots up, and they look at each in silence for a long moment. Steve can feel his ears starting to turn red, and then Bucky slowly raises his eyebrows and says, “Come on, you can thank me better than that.”

It’s all the invitation he needs, and a second later he’s got one hand in Bucky’s hair and the other on his hip, their lips pressed together as they kiss fiercely, almost eighty years of anticipation finally paying off. Everything disappears, the only things he registers being the scrape of Bucky’s teeth on his lower lip and the feel of his cold metal hand pressed against the small of his back. He can feel every scrap of desperation and relief and love that Bucky’s pouring into the kiss, and it’s so much that he has to break away, panting.

Bucky is watching him with dark eyes, breathing as heavily as Steve is. “That good enough?”

“Practice makes perfect,” Bucky replies, smirking, then draws Steve back in for another kiss-

-that they immediately break when Tony lets out a distinctive whoop. He’s standing a few metres away, Natasha slightly behind him with an incredibly smug grin.

“No fair, Million Dollar Man, we were supposed to wait for tonight to give presents,” Tony says, mock hurt.

“I’ve got a date tonight, actually,” Steve says, slipping his arm around Bucky’s waist and giving them all a bright grin. “How ‘bout we do the presents now?”

“As long as we don’t have to watch Barnes give you his “present” again,” Tony replies. He makes a face and turns on his heel, rallying the others to move inside. Natasha mouths ‘finally’ as Steve before following. Over by the grill, Sam gives a covert thumbs up and a toothy grin.

“Thought you said nobody was gonna give you presents?” Bucky asks. He’s still smirking, but it’s softer now.

“News to me,” Steve replies with a shrug. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve already got the best one.”

“That so?”

“Yep,” he says, popping the ‘p’, and Bucky laughs and ruffles his hair before hooking a finger into the waistband of his jeans and dragging him inside.


End file.
